


Somewhere Only We Know

by TidbitsAndThoughts



Series: Song Fic Stories [5]
Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, This scene will also come back so im so sorry, it's a surprise tool that will help us later, poor guy, violence in the first flashback and why I rated it teen, you know the drill with the prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26125063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TidbitsAndThoughts/pseuds/TidbitsAndThoughts
Summary: Snatcher overhears a song he has not heard for a very long time. When he realizes the child he loved is still alive and well, what will the old soul-snatching ghost do?This one is based on Somewhere Only We Know by Lily Allen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mer6X7nOY_o Please enjoy!
Series: Song Fic Stories [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884079
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	Somewhere Only We Know

He hadn’t noticed it at first, the soft chimes of a music box he had made with the help of a man named Thor once upon a time. But after a moment of listening to the gentle measures, Snatcher froze.

No.

He slowly flew up, placing his book on his chair as he moved toward the sound coming from outside his tree.

And then he heard her sing.

“Shooting star, darting across the sky,” Hat Kid’s small voice sounded mournful as she sang, “may you never have a reason to cry. Though shadows linger and nights grow cold, my love is with you, yours to always hold.”

_No._

It was the song he wrote for his daughter. But how on Earth did the brat know it?

Snatcher flew cautiously outside, immediately spotting her at the end of the black branch. The music box was in her hand and she was looking at the etching in the tree.

“Where’ver life takes you, you have my heart. No time or distance can keep us apart.” Her voice cracked and a tear slid down her cheek. She sniffled as she continued, “Young star, know you will always shine, for you hold light that once was mine.”

Snatcher’s mind whirled as he tried to make sense of the scene before him. Could she have found his music? Maybe? But he had never recorded the lyrics for the last stanza and _she had already started singing it._

“Lovely star,” she whispered, her voice barely maintaining the notes of the song, “if you go beyond even the moon, remember me by this enchanted tune. And should you forget even the sun above, never—” she stopped when the music box drifted into silence. Her shoulders shook as she pressed the box to her chest, gasping as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Never forget how much you’re loved,” Snatcher finished the song. Hat Kid jolted, looking at him with wide, blue eyes.

His baby’s blue eyes.

“Where did you hear that?” Snatcher asked slowly, holding her anxious gaze.

“My Papa sang it for me,” she answered, rubbing at her eyes.

“That’s impossible,” Snatcher said, shaking his head. “I wrote that.”

Hat Kid’s lips quivered as she swiveled on the branch, facing him head on.

“My name is Hattie,” she began and Snatcher felt his whole world stop as she continued, “I was raised by my guardian, who found me on his doorstep in a space ship that ran on Time Pieces.

“I had this,” she held up the music box, “but I didn’t have the key. When I went to the manor the first time, I saw the key, but I couldn’t grab it because, well, I was running from Vanessa. That’s why I went back. I went back because I needed to see if I really had found the key and I did.”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks by now and Snatcher was speechless.

“This whole time,” she sniffed, “the box was a music box. It played the song I remember my Papa sang for me.”

“ _Kid._ ” Snatcher hated how strangled his voice sounded. “What are you saying?”

“I think you’re my dad?” She shrugged weakly.

A painful second lingered as they stared at each other like deer frozen in a forest. Snatcher felt waves of joy, grief, relief, and dread drowning him. He leaned back.

And bolted.

“Wait!” Hat Kid— _his Hattie_ —called but he shut her out as he flew away, tail snaking through the sky.

_Months. He had spent months in the cellar. Trembling from cold. Hungry. Thirsty. Vanessa was the only one who visited, giving him enough food and water to barely keep him alive. Her form had been completely swallowed by shadow, her emerald eyes were crimson and flashed with rage. He asked about the screams. He had asked where everyone was, where Hattie was but Vanessa only coldly insisted that she was the only one who should matter to him._

_The last time she visited, she reached a gnarled hand with fingers sharpened into claws into his chest and tore into his sputtering heart, whispering that she would ensure he never left her. Tendrils of shadows looped around him, submerging him into darkness as her nails slashed into his heart. Torn asunder from within he gasped with voiceless agony, jerking against the stone wall. She removed a hand dripping as red as her eyes and took with her his last breath._

_The last thing he remembered was her retreating back and the closing of a door. He faded with tears dripping from golden eyes._

_A shadow dropped from the wall._

_Unchained, untethered by physical pain, he was able to move and flex his fingers for the first time in months. The shadow prince had rushed up stairs, into the manor, only to find frozen statues of the people he once knew and loved._

_Their terror was forever embalmed on their petrified bodies, mouths contorted by soundless screams and arms raised in a fruitless effort to shield against the cold._

_The shadow prince imagined his daughter, his beloved daughter frozen with such fear, and he felt a deeper breaking in his chest than anything Vanessa could have done to him._

_He fled from the manor._

Snatcher curled up on the large, glowing mushroom on top of the tree. He wasn’t sure if the Kid had seen where he had hid but luckily he was too far up to hear her call out.

Head propped in his talons and his elbows perched on his torso, he stared up at the night sky. Shadows and unrestrained mist steeped with magic obscured the stars but the golden moon cast a golden, watchful glow.

_Hattie_ , he thought, letting out a sigh. What was he to do? Centuries, he had never stopped grieving his daughter. Her innocent laugh, her delight as she played with the plush toys he made her, and her gentle hands that always reached for him, depended on him.

She was _alive_. She was alive! She was alive and the first thing he did when she came into the forest that was once _her_ home was _take her soul_.

The first thing he did when his daughter returned was try to _permanently get rid of her_. _Multiple_ times. He felt _horrible_.

And what was he supposed to do now? Technically the prince she remembered was gone. Dead. Snatcher didn’t remember how to be a father. He made contracts with others and forced them into his servitude. He wasn’t a nurturing shade in the slightest.

A distant squeak came from below and Snatcher peered over the mushroom. The Kid was making her way up the spiral of branches. She was halfway up already. Snatcher’s golden eyes drooped as he watched her scale the tree. The couple times she stumbled, he felt fear grip his chest before she righted herself and kept pushing forward.

Soon, she would reach him. Part of him wanted to fly away again, but something kept him on the mushroom, watching.

_The shadow prince, though a ghost, felt the unnatural cold as he trudged through the village. Ice stalagmites littered the covered streets, encasing his people and the bodies of children. Snow piled on the ice and snowflakes fell in sheets._

_The shadow prince didn’t know what to do._

_He crossed the bridge and into the thick woods where the trees were blue from the ice caking their bark. The forest he once knew to flourish with life and laughter was empty._

_Silent in the snow._

_Before he knew it, he was walking towards the oak tree. His legs, despite being only a projection of his soul, followed muscle memory down the familiar path. At the end of his walk, he came to the oak, choked not only by thick shards of ice but also a villainous looking black branch growing from the roots._

_The shadow prince dropped to the earth, staring at his purple hands. He thought about his daughter, the village, and how a love he once thought would shine for the world was now suffocating the once lively forest. With shoulders shaking, he surprised himself. He wouldn’t have thought spirits could cry._

Hattie had gotten three fourths of the way when she overshot her next jump. Missing the branch, she screamed as she dropped. Snatcher shot from his perch and dived down, catching her in his long arms seconds after she fell. Avoiding her frightened gaze, he carried her to the top of the mushroom. He could feel her fist grip the fluff on his chest as she held on tightly and he swallowed the lump rising in his throat.

Once he reached the blue mushroom, he hunched over, opening up his arms so she could hop down. Her grip on his chest lingered for a moment before she let him go. She landed on the mushroom with a bounce and he held out his hands, ready to catch her if she slipped again.

Hattie looked up at his golden eyes but before she could read his expression, he turned away. Snatcher settled onto his back, propping the back of his head with his arm as he lay his other across his stomach. He heard Hattie shuffle next to him. A quick glance found her staring up at the sky, a frown on her features.

He looked at the moon.

“I’m sorry, Kid,” Snatcher breathed out. Hattie tensed next to him and he continued, “I don’t know that the father you remember exists anymore.”

“You used to bring me here,” Hattie said after a moment. “Not on top of the mushroom, but this was the tree. You brought me here for picnics and read me stories.”

“I can’t believe you remember all that,” Snatcher shook his head, hoping she couldn’t hear the strain in his voice. “It’s been, what? Two—three hundred years?” He cackled, trying fruitlessly to lighten the mood.

“It’s been less than eleven years for me,” she whispered. Snatcher closed his eyes, sharply inhaling. She added, calmly, “I always dreamed about you.

“Lately, my memories and dreams had been getting fuzzy. I couldn’t remember your face and the songs you sang were fading,” she continued, somehow keeping her voice from cracking. “But when I listened to the music box for the first time in forever, I could picture you so clearly.”

She finished and he heard the rustling of fabric as she turned towards him. He kept his eyes on the moon, ignoring the burning in the corners of his eyes.

“You must be disappointed.” Snatcher covered his eyes with his arm, wishing he could block out her inevitable confirmation.

There was silence before a weak sniffle. Snatcher turned in surprise finding tears pooling in her blue eyes.

“Kid, what?” He reached out talon before pulling it back, unsure how to comfort her. “What’s wrong?” After all he had done to her this was what made her cry?

“I-I thought—” Hattie shook her head and looked down. Her voice had cracked and now tears streamed down her cheeks. “I thought that you were disappointed in me.”

“Excuse me? Disappointed in you?” Snatcher pushed into a semi-sitting position. “That’s just _terrible,_ Kid. You’ve saved this whole planet from being a lava pit. Not to mention you’ve kicked my butt plenty of times. Don’t you dare sell yourself short.” He paused, getting increasingly nervous when his what was supposed to be a pep talk was only succeeding in making her shoulders quake and lips quiver as she tried to stifle her tears. He let out a slow exhale, looking down and mumbling as he rubbed a talon against his arm, “Look, Kid, anyone would be proud to have a daughter like you. Including me.”

A sob escaped her and he looked up right as she threw herself at his chest. He froze as she wrapped her arms around him and cried against his spectral form. After a moment, he cautiously returned her embrace.

What he wouldn’t give to go back. If he could only go back and whisk his daughter away from the manor and he could have watched her grow up. But, even though it took a few centuries, give or take, he was so grateful he could see her again, healthy and happy.

_The shadow prince bent over his crossed legs, painstakingly working on sewing sunglasses over the plush cow’s eyes. His fireplace in the ruins of his old home burned before him with the fire he had created. Oddly, his flames did not consume wood as swiftly as he would have expected. In fact, it had been a week since he accidentally set fire to a whole cluster of trees in the forest in a fit of rage and they still burned._

_He closed his glowing eyes and groaned, thinking back to the moment he lost his cool. It had been because the latest dwellers he had freed from their frozen bodies did not include his daughter. The more ice he melted, the more he came to learn that if a body remained encased in Vanessa’s ice, the spirit could not move on._

_A day did not pass in which he did not ache for the frozen statues in the manor. But he wasn’t strong enough to rescue them yet._

_In frustration, his hand slipped and the needle phased through his finger and dropped to the ground. The shadow prince paused, staring at the needle on the floor. He placed the half-finished cow down and laid back on the floor, looking up at the leaves and endless night sky._

_Sewing, he found, not only provided a way to tether the dwellers to the physical world but also helped to tether him to his past a little. He wasn’t sure how many souls he would have to consume to overcome Vanessa’s ice magic for good, but the more lives he took the more monstrous he felt._

_A voice in his head was starting to wonder if it was really that bad._

_A twig snapped behind him and the shadow prince swiftly changed his form, losing discernable princely features as his legs lengthened into a twisting tail. His hands shifted into talons with threatening claws and he flew into the air, looking around until he spotted one of the dwellers that had recently signed a contract. The soul of the kid was still getting used to their doll feet and face planted a yard away. The shadow prince frowned._

_“Don’t push yourself, Champ.” He snaked over to the doll and lightly plucked it up by the hood. The light inside trembled as they looked him in the eye._

_The light shifted down, making it look like the spirit was ashamed. The shadow prince placed the doll down and the spirit shuffled on their feet, rubbing their rounded hands together nervously._

_“Do you need something?” The shadow prince asked._

_They shook their head no._

_“Do you want something?” The shadow prince’s impatience added a bite to his voice._

_They jerked before slowly shaking their head, glowing orb facing down._

_The shadow prince sighed._

_“Wait right here,” he instructed forcefully. He flew back to his home and grabbed one of the cow plushies he had already finished. He brought it back to the doll spirit and held it out._

_They looked up, the glow in their hood seeming to flicker with wonder._

_“Tell anyone I gave you this and you’re on well-cleaning duty, got it?” The shadow prince growled. They nodded, reaching out and taking the cow gingerly. The shadow prince watched, unable to subdue his smile as the dweller hugged the cow to their chest before turning to leave. The dweller paused before looking back around and waving. The shadow prince nodded, and the dweller ran back towards the growing village._

_Sighing, the prince slunk back towards the fireplace, and coiled up in front of it. He wondered if he would ever be able to reunite with his Hattie. He wondered if she would be afraid of his soul-snatching form like the other children spirits._

_He wondered if she could forgive him for all the sacrifices he was making because he wasn’t sure he could forgive himself._

“Kiddo,” Snatcher sighed, shaking himself out of the past. He gave her a gentle squeeze as her tears dried against his chest. “I am so glad you’re alive.”

“Aw,” Hattie chuckled weakly. “Never thought I’d hear that from you, Snatcher.”

He scowled, though more at himself, as he pulled away. She released him and he turned away, floating over to the edge of the mushroom. He sat down and pulled his tail to his chest, almost like he was hugging his knees.

“Well, Kiddo.” Snatcher kept his eyes on the moon as she came over to his side and perched next to him, mimicking his pose. “You found me, so now what?”

“What do you mean?” Hattie asked.

He glanced down at her, her wide blue eyes watching him with wonder. Unable to resist teasing her and a little uncomfortable from her stare, he bopped the rim of her purple hat, pushing it over her eyes.

“Hey!” She giggled, righting her hat before blowing a raspberry at him. He smiled before looking back at the moon.

“I’m not the prince anymore,” Snatcher said, his glowing mouth in a tight line. “Your father turned into a monster who tried to eat your soul. He’s—” Snatcher winced, frowning, “—no better than your mother. I wouldn’t blame you if you decided he’s not worth finding.”

A moment stretched out. He could feel her considering gaze, but he held his breath as he kept his eyes on the moon. This was her choice, he decided. She could decide if this was the end of everything and he would respect her decision and let her go. Then, a soft thump as she leaned into him.

“Do you still want to eat my soul?” She asked.

“Nah,” Snatcher tried to keep his voice light. “Ever since it escaped into that outhouse, I figured it might give me food poisoning.”

“You don’t want me dead anymore?” she asked.

He groaned.

“Of course not.”

“I don’t think you’re as bad as Vanessa,” she whispered.

“Heartbreak changed us both, Kiddo.” Snatcher looked down at his shadowy talons.

“You protect the people and place you love, but Vanessa hurt the people she supposedly loved,” Hattie argued. “You gave bodies to all the dwellers who wanted one. You protect the forest and the spirits here. Sure, you attacked me at first, but I could have been a threat. And, once you warmed up to me, you even went back to the manor to save me.”

“You don’t need to make excuses for me, Kid.” Snatcher felt the corners of his eyes burn.

“I won’t.” Hattie poked his side. “But even before I knew you were my dad, I always thought that the person you were when you were alive isn’t completely gone.”

Snatcher shook his head. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat but it lingered.

“I really don’t know that I can be the father you remember.”

“You don’t have to be,” Hattie nuzzled into his side. “I just want you to be my dad now. Whoa!” She yelped at the end as he scooped her up and hugged her tightly, cradling her head against his chest. “You okay?” She tried to look up, but he refused to loosen his grip.

“Fine,” he said tightly, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Don’t get used to this, Kiddo. I still have an image I need to maintain.”

“You aren’t crying, are you?” Hattie teased, wriggling a little to try to look at his face but he curled his long body over her so all she got was a mouthful of his neck fluff when she looked up.

“Of course not,” his voice wavered. “I just thought this was as good a place as any to begin.”

“I’ve missed you,” Hattie whispered. His grip tightened around her.

“And I’ve missed you, Kid.”

For the first time in centuries, he held his daughter again. He had no plans of letting her go.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, plushes is not a word, you have to write plushies. Legally obligated to write plushies, in fact. Anyway I do have just a comfort song coming next so it seems father and daughter will find peace at last! .... Until I complicate things haha. Thanks as always for reading! Please let me know what you think and I hope you're having a great day!


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